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KHammond: Nice job.It makes me mad, though, that people just don't take their job seriously. Jccalhoun: Yes, but you could say that about blogs in general. read more

jccalhoun: The gaming and tech blogging world is pretty much a snake eating its own tale. Many of the sites just reprint things from other sites read more

brian j. parker: arparp: You are mistaken. "[C]ompilations of data or other literary subject matter" is considered a type of "literary work" and are subject to copyright. http://www.copyright.gov/register/tx-compilations.html read more

arparp: who cares. you can't copyright facts. "sweat of the brow" is not a factor when determining if something is original for purposes of copyright. steal read more

About GameSetWatch

GameSetWatch.com is the alt.video game weblog and sister site of Gamasutra.com. It is dedicated to collecting curious links and media for offbeat and oft-ignored games from consoles old and new, as well as from the digital download, iOS, and indie spaces.

Hm, faithful GameSetWatch readers, it's time to admit something rather naughty. We played a little practical joke on IDG's GamePro.com, because we noticed them 'borrowing' some data from us without crediting.

The following is a cautionary tale about plagiarism and factchecking. If you are a professional journalist, please avert your eyes. If you're at all tickled by 'things game journos do to amuse themselves', please continue reading, forthwith.

Part 1: 'Release This' & The Gunny Sack Trilogy

So this whole little trip started with Gamasutra contributor Danny Cowan, who spends quite a long time every week scouring and cross-referencing to create our official 'Release This!' column, running down the worldwide game releases for the week. This isn't always the most straightforward thing, especially for more obscure releases, so it takes him a good while.

Recently, Danny started getting suspicious that certain other websites were 'borrowing' his release list without crediting. So he decided to include a game that, uhh, might not actually exist, into the 'Release This!' column last week, to see what would happen. Can you tell which one it is?

It's actually surprisingly difficult to work out the ringer from that list - I mean, even 'Great War Nations: The Spartans' sounds a bit suspect. But it's actually 'The Gunny Sack Trilogy', which is an acclaimed book by writer M.G. Vassanji, apparently focusing on Indians living in East Africa. But it's not actually - and has never been - a game.

Sorry, GamePro guys, but it does take us a good while to synthesize those release lists, so you should probably know better than Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V. Meanwhile, we'll be giggling relentlessly for the rest of the afternoon, if that's OK with you.

[UPDATE: Commenter Mike reminds me that Gamasutra had its own version of GameProGate last year, when NeoGAF caught our naughty UK editor David Jenkins sourcing translations of Japanese Media-Create charts from those forums without proper credit, using a similar (and possibly inspirational!) method. This was rectified by some updated credits and a little trans-Atlantic swearing. So we, also, are not angels - heh.]

I humbly extend my personal apology as GamePro news editor. Believe it or not, I have used Gama's "release this" as a premise for our own compilation for several months, in which we often (though clearly not always) add to, remove, and override your dates (i.e. with disputed games, Virtual Console releases, etc).

Nevertheless, we should have never commoditized Mr. Cowan's efforts without proper citation, and offer an apology to him as well. That was sloppy work on our part. From now on, we will be sure to source you, as we regularly do inline with any exclusive stories you break, if/when we use "release this" data. Any future concerns, just ping me by email.

On that note, do you reference any outside media reports when synthesizing your "release this" data, or do you get dates directly from individual publishers, one by one?

(And Mike: Thank you for reminding the community that no one is immune from the temptation of lifting public data without accreditation. It lessens the sting of feeling like a complete douche and is a reminder that we can all benefit from greater transparency when inking to others).

Hey, I've been in this position, too, having pieced together a few bits of info, then seeing it posted on a handful of unnamed European sites, so I know that it stings to have things lifted from your work. Oftentimes, we laugh it off and sort it out offline with the offending party, but sometimes a bit of calling out is warranted.

At the very least, it shows that Gamasutra is on top of releases. (I personally check against the GameStop, GameSpot and Amazon release lists when I'm dealt the unfortunate hand of generating release lists. I'll definitely provide more transparency in the future, 'cause *someone* at GameSpot's plugging in that release date data.)

Even worse is when someone lifts an entire feature idea from you, rewrites it to make it *worse*, and spoofs Digg for thousands of hits. Culprits will remain unnamed just now, but I will never forget! I just hope I can cook up as clever a way to poke them in the eye when the time for sweet vengeance arrives =)

First, an apology. I assumed something, and that just makes me an ass. The information was not public knowledge, and I now know that research and original reporting went into assembling the list. I'm also glad you posted the update above in your article, and can acknowledge mistakes happen. There was no malice behind my actions, only carelessness, and you can expect proper attribution in the future. One could argue if either is worse than the other, so I guess it's irrelevant. For now I'll extend an apology once again with the hope that you'll accept it.

There was a LamePro.com article (the GamePro April Fools thingy, I don't know if they still do it) in which they created a parody article for a game called "American McGee's Elvis." Another publication (IDG New Zealand, I think, but I don't remember, so don't quote me) took that fake article and ran a preview about the exciting upcoming Elvis game.

This sort of thing happens all the time. It's lame, but GamePro's not the only culprit.

The gaming and tech blogging world is pretty much a snake eating its own tale. Many of the sites just reprint things from other sites without even giving any credit. I discovered this back in January when I found lots of sites suddenly publishing stories about Jack Thompson getting sued by Take-Two which had originally happened back in March of 2007 http://popularculturegaming.com/?p=282